FRESHMEN AT OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE.
"I see about me certain signs of an aesthetic movement. I see certain young men who are, no doubt, sincere; but I can assure them that they are no more than caricatures." As he looked around him he said. "Save me from my disciples!" and then added, "but rather let me, as Wadsworth says, "Turn me from these bold, bad men'." Mr. Wilde spoke very pleasantly of his visit to Harvard, and suggested how finely the statue of a Greek athlete would look standing in our gymnasium, and what an ennobling influence it would have there. He said he would like to present us with one himself if we would accept it.
As for the work of students, he thought art should play a great part in it, and he did not see why an undergraduate should not receive a diploma for painting a beautiful picture, or modelling a fine piece of sculpture as well as for gaining a knowledge of that dreadful record of crime known as history.